Monday, March 25, 2013

Senate and House Republicans Refuse to Face the Fact they Lost in 2012 as Their Obstruction Continues

Group of small minded Congressional Republicans today who since they didn't win in 2014 they want to take the ball that belongs to their opponents and go home.

As I was going through my email this morning, I found the link to this article from Politicususa by RMuse, Making It Up As They Go Along, Republicans Use Fantasies To Block Obama Nomineeswhich I have excerpted. All of a sudden it is beginning to make sense. In the Senate the GOP is using the power of the new style filibuster to make it difficult on President Obama to put his team together. Maybe if he had a full cabinet and heads of agencies like ATF, the GOP wouldn't be able to be so obstructive as the Obama Administration would have more voices to speak to the American people.

The very idea that Republican Senators don't think President Obama has the right to pick members of his Cabinet and Administration goes against everything we have been taught over the years that the Senate will only hold up really bad nominations like Harriet Miers, the Bush nominee for SCOTUS, which both parties tabled. The attacks on Obama nominees are so far over the top that I have a hard time believing that Republicans in good conscience can even bring up the lies to keep someone from getting confirmed when they know it is false like "Friends of Hamas" which Cruz (R-TX) and Inhofe (R-OK) used as part of their attacks on Secretary of Defense Hagel. Group of small minded Congressional Republicans today who since they didn't win in 2014 they want to take the ball that belongs to their opponents and go home.

Find these tactics out of Republicans in Congress reprehensible and is not why they were elected by voters to go to the Congress. This group of Republicans continue to put wealthy donors and party over what it good for the Country and all Americans not just a privileged few. The longer this is going on, the more Republicans I know who are saying we are supporting Democrats in 2014 and 2016 because this Country cannot take another Republican President until it gets back on its feet completely if ever.

Throughout the President’s tenure, Republicans have raised false concerns about every nominee and judicial appointment to the point that instead of listing the nominees and appointees they have obstructed, it is easier to cite those they did not obstruct; John Kerry. Kerry was easily confirmed without objection because Republican chose him to be Secretary of State, and as long as this President allows Republicans to run the government and choose who serves in high-level positions, the confirmation process moves quickly through the Senate.

Typically and historically, the duly-elected President gets to choose his own cabinet members, department heads, and federal judges, but this is the 21st century, and either Senate Republicans decide who serves in government from their minority position, or they will block, place holds, and obstruct nominees and appointees regardless the Constitution or results of two elections.

Over the course of the past two-and-a-half months, Republicans have used Benghazi, drones, and now a levee and lone African American with a beret to hold up the President’s nominees to serve as Secretary of Defense, CIA director, Labor Secretary, and head of the EPA for no other reason than obstructing the President and the government. It is no small coincidence that every single high-profile position in the President’s administration has been blocked, held, obstructed, or warrants a special investigation by Republicans in the Senate, and it is not because they are radical extremists or pose an existential threat to America, but because Republicans have to block the President to prevent the government from operating and serving the people.

It is time to cite the real problem, and reason, Washington is dysfunctional and government is ineffective, and it is not poor personnel choices by the President, it is Republicans refusal to accept the results of two elections coupled with their belief that they control the African American in the Oval Office and run the government, and if he fails to comply, they will block and obstruct. The problem is not isolated to Senate Republicans either, because House Republicans refuse to allow a vote on any matter that does not eliminate anti-poverty programs, slash domestic spending, kill jobs, or raise much-needed revenue to run the government, but they will push entitlements for the rich and impose religious edicts on women and gays with ferocity and single-minded determination.

Republicans have distinguished themselves as the most ineffectual Congress in a century, if not in America’s history, through their obstructionism and inability to govern, or serve the people who elected them. They have, though, managed to say no, block, and attempted to prevent anyone from governing effectively, and used their deviance to find absurd reasons to keep government from working. As incompetent and worthless as congressional Republicans have been over the past four years, at least they are efficacious at something, but saying no, blocking progress, and obstruction for obstruction’s sake is not why they were sent to Washington. The media, Democrats, and especially President Obama need to tell the American people why government is not working, but only if Republicans give them permission to speak without citing deficit reduction and entitlement reform.

Seems Congressional Republicans are okay with spending money like a drunken sailor when they have a Republican President but when it is a Democrat especially a black Democrat, they have a real problem and refuse to face reality or to listen to most of their constituents preferring to listen only to the hard right. This has created a bubble like I have never witnessed where these obstructionist Republicans feel perfectly free to go against the wishes of the majority of Americans on issues like gun control, sequestration, budget, job bills especially for veterans, or aid for farmers still hurting from the drought which were left to flounder in the House until they went in the trash can when the new Congress took over.

Problem in the Senate is that Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D-NV) seems too weak to handle being Majority Leader cutting deals with GOP Minority Leader McConnell which is like trying to feed an alligator with your bare hand - going to get bit off every time. It takes outrage from voters across America to give Senator Reid a backbone on gun control measures like the Assault Weapons Ban which will be brought up for a vote in a few weeks after originally saying he doesn't have the votes. Need to keep the pressure on to make sure Senator Reid keeps his backbone and cuts NO more deals with Republicans.

After watching voters punish the GOP in the 2012 elections, Republican elites have been talking a brave game about reforms that would make the party less repulsive to Latinos, women and gay-friendly millennials. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the GOP's hip-hop-quoting young standard-bearer, is pressing conservatives to back an amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Dozens of party stalwarts, headlined by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, renounced their opposition to gay marriage in a Supreme Court brief. GOP bigwigs have even launched New Republican – a group modeled after Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic Leadership Council – which seeks to rebrand the party as "colorblind," "not anti-government" and dedicated to "ending corporate welfare."

Don't be fooled. On the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation's highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP's severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.

The hardcore rump of the party is even working to punish moderate outliers like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – the party's most popular leader – who was denied a speaking role at the conservative movement's annual convention, CPAC. Today's GOP may desperately need to remake itself as "culturally modern, environmentally responsible and economically inclusive," argues David Frum, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House, but it remains, he says, in the throes of a "Tea Party tantrum."

As it works to lock in as many retrograde policies as possible before it finally chooses to either modernize or die, the Republican Party is like a wounded beast: Rarely has it been more dangerous.

Finally dawned on me why it became easy to support President Obama after being on the other side - he reminds me of President Eisenhower and the way he governed. Ike didn't believe in the huge defense/industrial complex and warned the Country that it could be a huge problem in the future which has turned out to be 100% right. He believed everyone had the same rights to an education when he integrated schools in Arkansas. Ike was my Dad's hero and turned into mine - read every book I could find on Ike and then used for book reports to the stage by English teacher asked if I could ready other types of books. Turns out that Ike is turning out to be the last Republican President who truly understood what was best for all Americans.

Progressive ideas of today are similar to Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln

Ike is also why my premise that Republicans want to return to the 50's is wrong as today's hard right Republican Party doesn't like President Eisenhower - too much of a progressive. Received my "I like IKE" bumper strip in the mail which is sitting on my desk -- thinking of putting it on my car to irritate the hard right in my state. Will take warmer weather but about 95% sure, it is going to end up on my car.

In the Tea Party narrative, president Obama is a reckless socialist spending America into oblivion. In reality, the president has governed like an old-school Republican. Despite having taken heroic measures to rescue the economy in 2009, Obama has presided over the slowest expansion of federal spending since Eisenhower – and repeatedly offered to help Republicans slash the social safety net as part of a "grand bargain" that would restore the nation to fiscal balance.

Thanks to a rebounding tax base and the nearly $1 trillion in budget cuts that both parties agreed to in the first phase of the debt-ceiling deal, the deficit, entering 2013, was shrinking at a faster clip than at any time since the peace dividend after WWII. Federal outlays on both guns and butter were on a path to hit postwar lows as a percentage of gross domestic product by the end of Obama's second term.

Anyone who believes what the RNC Chair Priebus and other Republicans are peddling about an outreach need to understand this is for media consumption only as they have no intention of changing their policies or making the GOP inclusive as long as the hard right and donors like Koch Brothers run the Party. As soon as Priebus came out with his $10M plan to better get out their message, I laughed. It is their message that is out of touch and delivering that message to more voters will help the Democrats.

Democrats would be in better shape if they had better party organizations in Red States where they are not all that competitive even though they outnumber Republicans. State Democrat Parties need an infusion of a backbone like the one Reid needs. It is almost like they ask Republicans if it is okay to do something in the states and don't seem to be able to strike back very well.

The new Organizing for Action (OfA) that grew out of the Obama campaign's Organizing for America is a whole different story and believe they are the future of Democrat wins even in the Red States. They are organized, have people from all walks of life, welcome all Americans to help, and have one of the best GOTV operations I have ever seen. On Twitter a new group which supports OfA, Unite Blue, is doing the same thing with bringing people together to support Democrat candidates in 2014 and 2016.

Time to join the efforts of Americans across the Country who want obstructionists ousted from the Congress as they are not listening to "We the People" but a small group of wealthy donors and supporters from the hard right. Time to move American forward not backward like members of the Republican Party want to do to women in particular with their wanting to return to the back alley abortions after restricting birth control. Neanderthals had more brains then this group of anti-women hating men of today's Republican Party.

The future looks bright for America if we can defeat the Obstructionists in the House in 2014 and keep the Senate but it is going to take hard work to oust some of those House Members who are in gerrymandered 'safe' House seats. Those so-called safe seats do not take into consideration how mad a lot of Republicans are at today's GOP. We will be helping Democrat candidates oust the obstructionist in 2014 and see where it goes from there. Don't think it is going to change as the hard right shift of the GOP doesn't look to be ending. For many of us who used to vote and support Republican candidates, putting the Country first while turning our backs on Republicans has been an easier process then we could have ever imagined. That tells me the GOP I knew no longer exists with the hard right shift.

Progressive ideas of today are similar to Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Just call me a progressive today following the lead of those three great Republican Presidents.